


All The Best Washerwomen Drink Mountain Dew

by randomling



Category: Popslash
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-31
Updated: 2008-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 05:52:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/109110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomling/pseuds/randomling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance. Chris. And two crappy jobs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellie/gifts).



Chris pulled the closet door shut behind them and pushed Lance up against the wall. Not that there was much wall space in here: it was a stationery closet, packed full of pens and staplers and envelopes. Lance had about six clear inches to put his back against, his right arm squashed against the shelves, pressing boxes of paperclips up against each other. Chris's hand was warm and slightly sweaty, curled around Lance's neck as they kissed fiercely. Lance let his left hand press into Chris's ass and closed his eyes. Five months in and they were still doing this stupidly regularly. Someday-the-boss-is-going-to-notice regularly.

Chris was just the right height for this, a slight bend of the neck away. The stationery closet wasn't the best making-out space - Lance preferred the men's bathrooms or, you know, the bed in Chris's fully-functioning apartment - but he couldn't deny that this was hot. Chris's whole body seemed hungry, pressing and grinding up against Lance's; squeezing with his hands, sucking with his mouth. Their legs were wrapped together, Chris's knee pressed against Lance's in a way that was sort of uncomfortable... but even the discomfort was a little bit sexy, the way they were pushing up against each other because there wasn't the space for anything else.

Lance lifted his head briefly to get some air, and it was gratifying the way Chris grunted and tightened his hand on Lance's neck, pulling him back down. Lance hooked his elbow around Chris's waist and braced his back against the corner between shelf and wall, so that Chris was shoved up against the door. There; that was better, a little more room to manouever, space for Lance to part his legs slightly and then for Chris's groin to nestle up between them, and... yeah. Lance put his other arm around Chris's waist too, steadying them both, and Chris's free hand, the one that wasn't making fingertip-shaped bruises on the back of Lance's neck, brushed up the other side, hard. Over Lance's back, shoulder, neck, ear, and then into Lance's hair, pulling a little, until discomfort became tiny sparks of pain, just enough to sharpen the pleasure.

"Shit," Lance said convulsively, bumping his groin against Chris's. He was hard already; no surprise there, just the normal response to Chris's touch, to the closed-in space and the back-of-the-mind threat of getting caught. Chris chuckled low in his throat, a sexy-wicked sound. They weren't going to get off in here, but that was part of the fun. Chris loved to tease.

He knew all the right buttons to hit, too. Teeth now, scraping over Lance's lower lip, just gently, enough to tantalize but not to draw blood. Chris knew better than to do the blood thing in public - at least now - because Lance had been pretty embarrassed the one time Chris had made him bleed by accident at a drive-in movie. Chris had been pretty much delighted, and in fact, even thinking about it was, fuck..

He drew in a great shuddering breath as Chris's tongue came to join the party, licking over Lance's lip and then down towards his throat, little nips with his teeth and then soothing his tongue, and the combination of pain and pleasure was intoxicating, making Lance squeeze his hand against Chris's ass, pressing their groins together. God, but Chris was good at this. He sank back against the shelves and let Chris go to town, and there was a tiny voice in his head reminding him that he'd need to button his shirt all the way up when they got out of here, to cover the tiny red marks Chris's teeth would be making on his skin.

Mmm.

Lance was far enough gone that he didn't immediately register the rush of cool air around his body as Chris pulled suddenly away. It took him a couple of seconds to open his eyes, good vibrations still playing tag around his body, and when he did there was Joey, holding the closet door open and looking one hundred per cent stunned. Lance jerked, his arm knocking against the shelves, and a pile of yellow legal pads fell on Chris's head.

***

"Harless, Pearlman and Wright, Joshua speaking."

Lance smiled at JC as he passed the third floor reception desk, and JC smiled back, still talking into his headset. No one called him 'Joshua', not out in the real world; if you got him alone, JC would explain that Joshua was just a character he played while he was at work. JC was an actor - sometimes, anyway, when he wasn't being a musician or novelist or poet or painter. One thing was for sure, he was an artist. No; an artiste.

Lance didn't have any such illusions, not really. He guessed they all had their frustrated dreams and ambitions. There was Joey, who really was an actor; Chris, who was amateur shrink, sociologist, and comedian, all rolled into one; and Justin, who didn't know yet what he was going to be, but whatever it was, it'd be awesome. Lance figured that out of all of them, Justin was probably the one most likely to end up an actual lawyer. It sort of ran in the family.

Lance himself had never really decided whether he wanted to be a singer or an astronaut. Chris had laughed when he'd first told them that, over beers his sixth or seventh week at HPW: "You can sing to the aliens," he'd said. "JC can write the songs!" And he'd laughed to himself over that most of the rest of the night. Chris wasn't one to let a good joke rest when it could be working.

There was a big meeting this afternoon. Afternoon going on evening, Lance figured, as the agendas he was passing out were about half an inch thick. He caught sight of Justin on the other side of the open-plan office, also with a mail cart, but taking stuff on instead of passing it out. Great: looked like there was a big mailing to send out this afternoon. Justin's cart was already piled high and the desk he was standing next to was still stacked with packages. Lance waved at Justin briefly as he passed, but Justin didn't seem to notice - way too busy flirting with the woman who was sending all the mail. Damn, but she was old enough to be his mother.

He'd gotten all the way to the back of the office, cart empty, and was turning back towards the elevator when he heard Justin's familiar bray of laughter, loud in the hush of the office. A few heads looked up, and Lance cast around for the source of Justin's amusement. When he found it, he laughed too; Chris was sailing down a gangway on the back of his mail cart, one leg stretched out behind him like a figure skater.

He had the weirdest boyfriend.

***

"'Mail room clerk'," Joey had explained on Lance's first day, "actually means, 'whatever menial shit they don't got anyone else to do'." This had turned out to be true. For example: he was pretty sure that it was the job of the Buildings team to put up the Christmas decorations, but it had been the four of them that had done it one Friday evening - himself, Chris, Joey and Justin. JC had invited himself along, offering to lend them his 'artistic eye', and spent the entire evening munching popcorn and saying, "That isn't straight." Eventually, Chris had turned to him and said, "Neither are you, jackass, so fuck off," and JC had laughed.

In his seven months here, Lance had done way more than just pick up and drop off mail. He'd done Xeroxing and filing, sent faxes, and even run out for coffee or food when there was a meeting running over or people working late. The firm was pretty large, three floors of mostly-lawyers and another for accountants and administrators, so there was almost always someone working late. The overtime pay was pretty good, but working until eight most every night certainly wasn't. Lance loved Sundays, when no one could ask him to work because the building was fucking well closed. Mostly.

More importantly, no one could ask Chris to work either. Chris worked every second of overtime he could, 'cause he had a mother and sisters back in Pennsylvania who could really use the money.

Right now, Lance was standing in Starbucks with an order for the big meeting in his hand. Mrs Harless had given it to Justin - she was 'Mom' to him - but Lance had snatched it as soon as they were out of her sight on the basis that Justin would only lose it. It'd take all four of them to carry all the coffees back to HPW; they'd even put the big mailing on hold to do it, because if Mrs Harless told you to do something you didn't say no. Chris had vanished, which was pretty typical. Joey was standing beside Lance, calmly eyeing the ass of the lady in front, and Justin was sulking a little just behind.

Lance spent most of the wait looking around for Chris, who had really, honest-to-God disappeared. He was weird and unpredictable, all dumb jokes and sudden changes of subject in the middle of a conversation, but it wasn't like him to just skip out on work - needing the money, and all. There was a frown that stayed stubbornly on Lance's face until Joey said, "You okay?"

"Just lookin' for Chris," Lance said.

"He'll be back," Justin said confidently. "It's Chris."

"Yeah," said Lance.

He had to refer to the list about a thousand times to get all the orders right, and the coffees cost almost all of the fifty dollars Mrs Harless had given them to pay with. Ouch. Chris didn't reappear and didn't reappear; Lance kept looking for him, each time the attendant was passing back a coffee order, and didn't see him. Then Lance was turning around to hand Justin some of the coffees to carry back to work, and Chris was just there, standing beside Justin as if nothing had happened. Lance started and almost threw Justin's coffees on the floor.

***

Chris had beautiful hands.

Lance seemed to notice this about fifty times a day. Right now, it was because three of them were sitting around the table in the mail room, all folding letters into envelopes - the second giant mailing of the day. Lance was right across from Chris and could see the movements of his fingers as he worked, quick and light, and couldn't help but think of all the other things those fingers could do. Chris caught him watching and smiled, a small, secret smile that Joey didn't catch.

Lance smiled back, then turned because the mailroom door had bumped open again. Justin was standing with his mail cart in front of him, piled high with more letters and envelopes. He reached forward to start dumping them onto the table. "That's the last of them," Justin said.

"Cool," Chris said, "sit your ass down and get to work."

Justin smiled faintly and finished dumping out his cart before sitting down. They folded in silence for a few minutes before Chris said, "We're like washerwomen."

"What?" Joey said.

"Yeah. All this folding. Except we're folding sheets of paper instead of sheets of... sheet."

Justin's brow creased, but the corners of his lips turned up, too. "Huh?"

"Yeah. Washerwomen of the mail room." Lance smiled and shook his head, and Chris grinned, catching Lance's eye. "'Way down on the farm where the animals play'..." Chris began to sing.

"No," Lance said, laughing. "No, no."

"'Lived a wishy washy washer woman who washes all day'..."

Lance shook his head and said, "No," again, but it was too late, because Justin had joined in. Joey picked up the tune on the next line, and when they started the refrain, Lance sighed and joined in, too. How they managed to keep straight faces until the last line of the refrain, Lance had no clue. It was Joey who started to laugh first, but pretty sure they were all laughing, and Lance had abandoned his paper-folding to put his head in his hands.

He could still see Chris's hands, never stopping, making neat, precise folds in sheets of paper as he laughed.

***

Lance had moved to Memphis in May and landed the HPW job the week after. It had been hell in the summer, the way that cities always were, muggy and close and sweaty; but that had had its advantages, too. He still remembered the way Chris used to smell after work on a hot day, how it should have been gross but somehow wasn't to smell the sweat on his skin and feel it sticky-clammy under his hands. They'd hooked up in July, their first kiss after a water fight in the second-floor kitchen. Chris's hands creeping under his shirt. Water cooling on his skin and in his hair, then seeming to steam away with the sudden heat.

Now it was December, their last full week of work before Christmas, and the days had turned cool. Chris had taken to bitching about how Tennessee didn't get snow - the traditional response was to threaten him with Mr Pearlman's dandruff, which would get Chris shrieking and running - but Lance had grown up in the South and he liked the mild winter weather. Cool enough to wear a sweater, maybe even a jacket at night, the sky cloudless and clear overhead. There was nowhere to park on Chris's street, so they ended up leaving the car a few blocks over and walking back to his apartment hand in hand. There was no one around to see.

Back in Mississippi, Lance would have been looking over his shoulder every few seconds and totally ruining the mood.

"C'mon," Chris said, holding his free hand palm-up, "snow."

Lance chuckled. "Not gonna happen," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but it doesn't feel like Christmas if it doesn't snow."

"You get me inside and I'll make it feel like Christmas," Lance said in a low voice. He leaned his shoulder against Chris's, pressing their bodies close, and felt Chris shudder very slightly.

He obviously couldn't resist the joke, though. "You gonna shower me with dandruff?"

Lance snorted into Chris's hair. "Pretty sure there's other ways to celebrate."


	2. Chapter 2

Some days there wasn't enough coffee on the planet to get you through a morning. Chris had agreed to work Saturday, which meant Lance had resigned himself to doing the same. He could only hope that they'd get done early and have the afternoon free, because Lance had really been looking forward to having Chris to himself today.

Chris was a pretty unpredictable guy, the kind who sang Christmas carols in August and didn't think there was anything weird about that. The kind of guy who could push you into a closet one minute and be entirely professional the next. Lance didn't pretend to understand him, but Chris being a mystery was - in a way, it was part of the fun.

Once, right around the transition from random hookups to sort-of-dating, Chris had broken a date to work overtime. Actually, that hadn't just happened the once - but that had been the first time, and Lance had been equal measures pissed and hurt. He'd bitched about it to Joey and Justin in the space of about half an hour, and then retreated to the mail room to sulk over a mailing they were sending out. It was the end of August, so sweltering hot that even the building's air conditioning wasn't doing much to keep them cool. Lance had sat in the mail room alone for maybe twenty minutes, stuffing envelopes and giving himself papercuts from doing it too fast. Then the door had opened, and Lance had looked up and seen Chris.

"Sorry," Chris had said simply, and slid a can of soda across the table towards Lance. Lance caught it; it was ice-cold.

"Mountain Dew?"

"So you're still awake when I'm done with work," Chris had said. Since then there had been a lot of Mountain Dews and a lot of apologies.

That Saturday, Lance was half-relieved that they got to work to find that there wasn't all that much to do. Half-annoyed, though, because couldn't they just have stayed home? He spent most of the morning in the archives, filing paperwork from a case that had finally settled out of court the previous night. Chris was upstairs, taking the minutes from the previous night's meeting around - Lance wondered why they couldn't just email that stuff, but then again, if they did that, he and Chris would be out of a job. Joey, too. Lance was sure Mom would find something for Justin to do around the place.

JC was working, too, overtime cover for the weekend receptionist, who was either off sick or doing a little Christmas shopping. Lance stopped by his desk when he was done with the filing, but JC was talking on the phone and couldn't be much company. Lance ended up in the mail room, dealing with the small pile of internal mail.

Chris showed up right around lunchtime.

"Tell me you're done," Lance said.

Chris sighed. "One more thing to do. Then we're out of here, I swear."

***

Monday was more of the same, with the exception that Christmas was really close now and almost nobody was doing any work. Even the mail room was quiet, apart from Christmas cards to pass out. Chris loved that job, so Lance let him do it and spent a lot of the morning reading magazines and talking to Joey. Justin flitted in and out, but he wasn't around at lunchtime because he'd been invited to the partners' Christmas party. He was going to disappear pretty early in the evening, too, but Chris collared him as he was going out the door. Literally, grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back into the mail room. Justin had several inches and quite a few pounds on Chris, but he came.

"What?" Justin said.

"You're sticking around for five minutes," Chris said.

"Uh... my mom's gonna kill me if I'm late," Justin said.

"Trust me, you'll be happy to die after this."

Justin raised his eyebrows. Lance looked at Chris questioningly, but Chris only smiled. A look to Joey only got a smile and a shrug. "Dude, it's Chris, who knows?"

Chris hopped up onto the table. "Now," he said, "it's Christmas time. You all know what that's about." Chris sang the first couple of lines of 'We Wish You A Merry Christmas', until Joey and Lance looked at each other again. "I guess you're all wondering why I'm standing on the table. Well. That was just to get your attention."

Chris jumped back onto the floor and dived under the table to pull out a bag. Lance frowned, because he'd never seen the bag before, and he'd come into work with Chris every morning for the last week and a half. As Chris straightened up, JC appeared at the door to the mailroom, and Chris grinned.

"Ah ha," he said, "the quintet is complete."

Lance smiled. Sometimes it seemed wrong that JC worked reception and not in the mail room with the rest of them - they so often hung out together as a five. JC came to sit at the table, and Chris thrust one hand into the bag.

"For JC," he said, and tossed something smallish and shiny towards him. JC caught it effortlessly. It was a little package, the paper a metallic red, and JC opened it with a frown.

"Huh," he said, pulling out a deck of cards.

"Well, you've tried music, acting, writing... I figured next year you could be a stage magician."

JC burst out laughing. "Thanks, man, I'll give it a try."

For Joey, there was a horrible cheap gold medallion. Maybe from Walmart. "To impress the ladies," Chris said with mock-seriousness, and Joey grinned and - mother of God - put the thing on. Justin got a keychain with a little basketball on it, because he and Chris both loved basketball. Lance's gift was last, and by the shape of it Lance totally knew what it was already.

"Mountain Dew?" Justin said. Lance laughed and met Chris's eyes. "Man," Justin went on, "if I got my girlfriend something like that for Christmas, she'd be really pissed."

"You're too young to have a girlfriend," Chris said. He didn't even look at Justin when he said it. He was too busy making eye contact with Lance.

Lance tuned out Justin's protests, popped the tab on the soda, and took a long drink. When he looked at Chris again, they were both smiling.

"Well, it's the festive season," Chris announced. "And the end of the day. So take your crappy, cheap-ass gifts and have a merry fucking Christmas. I'm driving home tomorrow."

"Yeah, I'm out of here," Justin said, getting up. "See y'all next year."

The next five minutes were goodbyes. It seemed weird to think he wasn't going to see any of the guys now until January - not even Chris, who'd be back in Pennsylvania with his mom and sisters. Lance wasn't going home this year, wouldn't go back to Mississippi if you paid him to, so he guessed he'd be hanging out in Memphis this Christmas.

"Coming back to my place?" Chris said when the other guys were gone.

"Sure," said Lance. He'd drink his soda in the car.

***

Lance woke up and it was dark again. Still dark. Whichever. Car journeys always made him sleepy if he wasn't driving, and this had been a long one. He'd slept through Kentucky and woken up in Ohio, lots of flat, flat land going past at high speed in the dark. Beside him, Chris was pulling the car to a stop.

He'd woken up early that morning to find that Chris was saying, "You didn't pack, did you?" For just a moment, Chris sounded so much like Lance's mother that Lance was startled into a sitting position. But there he was in Chris's bed. He'd rubbed his eyes and it had taken five minutes before he'd managed to figure out that Chris had expected him to pack a bag and come to Pennsylvania for Christmas. No discussion, no hints even, just a flat assumption.

Pure fucking Chris.

"See," Chris said, gesturing out the window. "That's better."

It was snowing. Before tonight, Lance hadn't been north of Louisville; he'd never actually seen snow in person before. In pictures, sure. But... up close it was kind of pretty, almost sparkling there on the ground, and the air felt hushed even though they were on the highway a couple of days before Christmas, cars rushing past them one after another. Fuck, though. "It's cold," Lance said.

"Two hours and we'll be home," said Chris.

Lance looked at his watch. It was nine-thirty already.

***

Lance was pretty sure the bag he'd packed was completely inadequate for the vacation, especially since he'd packed it in twenty sleepy minutes, Chris standing over him, from the clothes he had lying around Chris's apartment anyway. Technically, Lance did have an apartment of his own - he paid rent and everything - but he hadn't actually seen the inside of it for a couple of weeks. His roommate had taken to dropping off mail on the way to work, which meant Lance had even less reason to go home.

An hour from Chris's home town, they drew into a gas station. Chris made a beeline for the soda, and Lance went for coffee, which he drank beside the car, stamping his feet in the snow. Chris sat on the hood of the car, sipping Mountain Dew and watching him like a hawk. The second Lance was done, Chris snatched the empty coffee cup away and tossed it into the trash with his soda can.

"Ready to - ?"

Lance didn't get as far as finishing the question before Chris grabbed him by the wrist. Chris's grip was firm, small fingers like a vice, and Lance couldn't help but follow when Chris dragged him. Around the back of the gas station to a public bathroom, cold and not too clean. Lance opened his mouth to ask, and Chris made a small sound of impatience and shoved Lance into the nearest stall.

At least it was a little more space than a supply closet. Lance had time to flip down the toilet seat before Chris was sitting in his lap, straddling him, and they were groin-to-groin, kissing, grabbing at each other. Lance had to laugh to himself, just a little, because what was it with them and enclosed spaces?

"Early Christmas present?" Chris asked.

Because they didn't do this almost every day.

Chris was grinding gently against Lance, and he bit gently into Lance's lower lip. Here, where there was a lock on the door and this maybe wasn't just pre-show, Lance felt brave enough to slide one hand under the hem of Chris's shirt and scratch his fingernails lightly down Chris's back. Chris groaned happily.

"Merry Christmas," Lance murmured into the kiss.

"Merry Christmas."

The bathroom was cold, but Chris's body was warm, holding down Lance's legs, one hand squeezing each of Lance's shoulders. Lance let out a small sigh and leaned up into the kiss, pressing his fingernails a little more firmly into Chris's back. Chris's teeth bit deeper into Lance's lip, and as he drew back, Lance taste blood. His body's response was instant, a shudder-twitch that ran right through him and left him rock-hard and panting. Chris let out a little half-laugh and bent forward again, licking over the tiny cut on Lance's lip.

"Oh," said Lance breathlessly, "you bastard."

"You love it," Chris said.

If things were just a little different, Lance thought, there'd be an obvious response to that. The words were right there, sitting on his tongue, but they were words that would change everything. And maybe it was right to leave things as they were for now. Chris was so prickly and unpredictable, and maybe he'd fall into Lance's arms with deep romantic declarations, but then again... maybe he wouldn't. So all Lance said was, "Yes."

Chris seemed to approve of that. He surged forward into the kiss again, using that magic combination of teeth and tongue over Lance's lower lip, and when he pulled back again, Lance was almost at the point where words didn't make sense any more. Not quite, though.

"You love me," Chris said.

Lance blinked and said, "Yes."

"Good." That was just like Chris, too, to sound totally firm and businesslike when finding out if somebody loved him. "You know, me too."

"You love you?"

"Asshole."

Lance grinned. "Not in a public bathroom."

"Oh, now you're just being a spoilsport."

"You wanna shut up and have sex?"

"Fine."

Lance closed his eyes and let Chris kiss him again. For a moment, the kiss was something that didn't belong in a bathroom make-out session, something slow and sweet and tender. Lance stroked at Chris's spine gently with the pads of his fingers, not wanting to turn the fire back on, not just yet, though his body was aching from holding it back.

Then Chris said, "Mmmmm." The teeth came out again, sliding over the tender spot on Lance's lip, and that was exactly the way it should be, all the sensations sudden and quick and sharp. Just like Chris.

Lance writhed. Chris rolled his hips forward, slow pressure against Lance's groin, and everything else was forgotten.


End file.
